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Year
1974
Month Day
October 09

Oskar Schindler—credited with saving 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust—dies

German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, dies at the age of 66.

A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded Nazi officials to allow the transfer of his workers to the Plaszow labor camp, thus saving them from deportation to the death camps. In 1944, all Jews at Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz, but Schindler, at great risk to himself, bribed officials into allowing him to keep his workers and set up a factory in a safer location in occupied Czechoslovakia. By the war’s end, he was penniless, but he had saved 1,200 Jewish people.

In 1962, he was declared a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official agency for remembering the Holocaust. According to his wishes, he was buried in Israel at the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion.

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ALSO ON THIS DAY

World War II
1940

St. Paul’s Cathedral bombed

During the Battle of Britain, the German Luftwaffe launches a heavy nighttime air raid on London. The dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral was pierced by a Nazi bomb, leaving the high altar in ruin. It was one of the few occasions that the 17th-century cathedral suffered significant ...read more

Russia
1975

Andrei Sakharov wins Nobel Peace Prize

Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who helped build the USSR’s first hydrogen bomb, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his struggle against “the abuse of power and violations of human dignity in all its forms.” Sakharov was forbidden by the ...read more

Colonial America
1635

Rhode Island founder banished from Massachusetts

Religious dissident Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the General Court of Massachusetts. Williams had spoken out against the right of civil authorities to punish religious dissension and to confiscate Native American land. After leaving ...read more

Inventions & Science
1992

Meteorite crashes into Chevy Malibu

On October 9, 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp is watching television in her parents’ living room in Peekskill, New York when she hears a thunderous crash in the driveway. Alarmed, Knapp ran outside to investigate. What she found was startling, to say the least: a sizeable hole ...read more

Latin America
1967

Che Guevara is executed

On October 9, 1967, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia and executed him the following day. His ...read more

Inventions & Science
1936

Hoover Dam begins transmitting electricity to Los Angeles

On October 9, 1936, harnessing the power of the mighty Colorado River, Hoover Dam begins sending electricity over transmission lines spanning 266 miles of mountains and deserts to run the lights, radios, and stoves of Los Angeles. Initially named Boulder Dam, work on the dam was ...read more

Art, Literature, and Film History
1946

"The Iceman Cometh," by Eugene O’Neill, opens on Broadway

Hailed by many critics as Eugene O’Neill’s finest work, The Iceman Cometh opens at the Martin Beck Theater on October 9, 1946. The play, about desperate tavern bums clinging to illusion as a remedy for despair, was the last O’Neill play to be produced on Broadway before the ...read more

Natural Disasters & Environment
1963

Landslide kills thousands in Italy

On October 9, 1963, a landslide in Italy leads to the deaths of more than 2,000 people when it causes a sudden and massive wave of water to overwhelm a dam. The Diga del Vajont dam was built in the Vaiont Gorge to supply hydroelectric power to Northern Italy. Located 10 miles ...read more

Crime
1942

A Chicago bootlegger escapes from prison

Chicago bootlegger Roger “The Terrible” Touhy escapes from Illinois’ Stateville Prison by climbing the guard’s tower. Touhy, who had been framed for kidnapping by his bootlegging rivals with the help of corrupt Chicago officials, was serving a 99-year sentence for a kidnapping he ...read more